Italy there were so many forms of government, dukedoms, baronies,
marquisates, signories, city republics, each with its own custom
regulations, not to speak of each having its own coinage and language,
that travelers encountered obstacles almost at every step. For the most
part, journeys had to be made afoot and a degree of safety was attained
only if the traveler joined a large trade caravan, a pilgrimage or a
governmental expedition. Night often found the party far from a hospice
or inn and so they were obliged for shelter to camp on the highway or
in the fields. Necessarily the traveler was subjected to innumerable
privations and sufferings.

I have not been able to get accurate information as to the exact length
of time required to make a trip, say from London to Paris--a distance
covered the other day by an aeroplane in eighty minutes. But, the
"Consuetudines" of the Hereford Cathedral, England, afford us some data
upon which to base the conclusion that six weeks were necessary for
such a trip, allowing another week for religious purposes. The
"Consuetudines" after specifying that no canon of the cathedral was to
make more than one pilgrimage beyond the seas in his lifetime, allows
the clergyman seven weeks' absence to go abroad to the tomb of St. Denis
in the suburbs of Paris, sixteen weeks to Rome and a year to Jerusalem.

A table of time limits between Florence and the principal cities of
Europe and the East made by the Florentine Banking houses in Dante's
day, showed the number of days required for consignments of specie and
goods to reach their destination. Rome was reached in fifteen days,
Venice and Naples in twenty days, Flanders in seventy days, England and
Constantinople in seventy-five days, Cyprus in ninety days. How long it
took Dante to make the trip from Florence to Rome, we do not know but
history tells us that he went to the Eternal City in the year 1300. He